Democrats: Pro-Bombing Softies
Politico illustrating what “easier to bomb Iran” would look like.
Under the headline “The Ultimate Argument in Favor of the Iran Deal: The Agreement Would Make It Easier to Bomb Iran,” Politico (8/24/15) reported that “the pact would make it easier to bomb Iran, administration officials have told lawmakers.”
Two days later, in a story on Senate campaigns, Politico (8/26/15) was reporting that “Republicans are attacking Democrats backing the deal as soft on national defense.”
While the two news reports might appear to be at odds, they actually share the common assumption that Iran is bellicose and threatening, and consider the main criterion for any deal with Iran to be how bellicose and threatening it allows the US
to be.
US Role in Cluster Bomb Attacks
Cluster bombs used in Yemen–by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia–had been supplied by the United States.
The New York Times (9/3/15) reported that cluster bombs, which it identified as “widely outlawed munitions that kill and maim indiscriminately,” had been used in recent conflicts in Libya, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen—in defiance of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which banned the production, sale and use of these weapons in 2010. The Times said the use of cluster bombs was criticized by many nations, including the United States, described as being among those nations “that have not yet joined the treaty but have abided by its provisions.”
What the Times did not initially report was that cluster bombs used in Yemen—by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia—had been supplied by the United States, making the claim that the US was abiding by the Convention inaccurate. After a FAIR Action Alert (9/3/15), the Times issued a correction, and rewrote the story to acknowledge that “at least three different types of American-made cluster munitions had been used by Saudi-led forces this year in the Yemen conflict.”
Welfare Recipients = ‘Freeloaders’
Are Immigrants Really Freeloaders? New Study Backs Trump’s Attacks,” was a CNBC headline (9/3/15) referring to an anti-immigrant group’s report on the percentage of immigrant-headed households that receives social benefits. The same slur occurred in the story’s lead: “A new study issued Wednesday by a group that favors tighter controls on immigration concludes that immigrants may be freeloaders after all.” The Center for Immigration Studies report actually looked not at immigrants but at “immigrant-led households,” thereby including many native-born citizens who are eligible for benefits that noncitizens don’t receive.
Spying on a Scale No One Wants to Remember
Greenpeace, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Tenth Amendment Center, protesting NSA’s mass surveillance program, which processes 20 billion phone calls and internet messages every day.
The New York Times’ David Sanger (7/31/15) wrote that the Obama administration concluded that a hacking attack suspected of coming from China was “so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases did not apply.” Sanger called it “espionage, on a scale that no one imagined before.”
Really? China is accused of obtaining personal information about 20 million Americans—federal employees and contractors—and that’s a lot of information. But the US’s NSA, according to documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, processes 20 billion phone calls and internet messages every day (Washington Post, 5/12/14). The NSA’s unofficial motto is “Collect It All”—and it’s not hard to imagine why.
Katrina’s Silver Lining Made of Tin
Malcolm Gladwell had a New Yorker piece (8/24/15) pointing out the supposed upside to Hurricane Katrina:
Katrina reminds us that sometimes a clean break with the past has its advantages. The fact that you may have lived in a neighborhood for generations, or become attached to a set of long-standing educational traditions, does not mean that you should always return to that neighborhood if you are displaced, or reconstruct those traditions. The schools of New Orleans made a necessary and painful sacrifice: They extended the pain of Katrina in order to build a better future for the city’s children.
But as Jennifer Berkshire pointed out in Salon (8/3/15), the social engineering Gladwell celebrates hasn’t built a better life for the city’s children: “Child poverty stands at 39 percent, a figure that’s unchanged since Katrina, even though the city is now home to tens of thousands fewer children.” Maybe they just need more painful sacrifice.
Trust Vox: Comcast Is Your Friend
The website Vox (9/8/15) ran an explainer that assured readers that “cable bundling almost certainly saves customers money in aggregate…. For as little as people seem to like their cable providers, it’s easier forComcast (speaking for millions) to hold ESPN at that $6 figure than it would be for you or me to do so as an individual.” Or as a photo caption summed up: “Comcast may not be much loved by its customers, but it has the weight of their collective voice in its bargaining over carriage fees.”
Vox didn’t initially mention was that Comcast is one of the website’s main owners—and invested another $200 million in the outlet about a month before the piece on cable bundling ran (Wall Street Journal, 8/12/15). After FAIR writer Adam Johnson and others pointed out the glaring conflict, Vox did disclose it—in a yellow dot that when clicked on revealed a tiny-type footnote: “Comcast owns NBC-Universal, which is an investor in Vox Media, which publishes Vox.” Which is a roundabout way of saying that you wrote a piece praising the company that provides about a third of your paycheck.
